A Jan. 13 NewsBusters post by Mark Finkelstein bashes Democratic Rep. Steven Kagen for having "insulted First Lady Laura Bush, President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and Karl Rove at a White House function for new members." We have no problem with that; Kagen appears to have that coming (though we suspect Finkelstein would be less disdainful of such "vulgar and unseemly actions" had the target been a Democrat). But then, Finkelstein also plays guilt by association -- because Kagen was once "the Allergy Consultant for CNN," that somehow means CNN is to blame for Kagen's remarks as well.

"You can take the man out of CNN - and stick him in Congress - but you can't take the CNN out of the man," Finkelstein writes, adding, "What kind of person would do something like this? The kind of person that CNN would hire to be a consultant."

Unless Finkelstein can prove that 1) Kagen is still CNN's allergy consultant; 2) Kagen was hired by CNN specifically because he was a Democrat; and 3) Kagen's comments for CNN on the subject of allergies were somehow liberally biased (after all, NewsBusters folks are doing their darndest to prove Stephen Colbert right, and the truth about allergies may indeed have a well-known liberal bias), CNN is irrelevant to this particular issue.

A Jan. 13 WorldNetDaily column by Rabbi Daniel Lapin is bad enough -- not only does it essentially claim that anyone who questions the political influence of the religious right is "anti-Christian," it goes on to liken such criticism to anti-Semitism.

But Lapin's presence at WND suggests that WND has signed on for the public rehabilitation of Lapin. As we've detailed, despite its claim to offer "hard-hitting investigative reporting of government waste, fraud and abuse," its coverage of corruption involving such conservatives as Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff was lethargic at best. And WND has never reported on the ties of Lapin's organization, Toward Tradition, to Abramoff (beyond noting Abramoff's presence on the group's advisory board in a 2002 article) -- Abramoff funneled money through the group to influence one political figure.

Far from shunning this scandal-tarred figure, WND ran five columns by Lapin in 2006, featured his support of a TV program that dubiously claimed that Hitler was Charles Darwin's fault, and promoted a blurb he supplied for WND managing editor David Kupelian's book, "The Marketing of Evil."

Is NewsMax using its news coverage to oppose President Bush's plan to increase troops in Iraq?

On the heels of Christopher Ruddy's Jan. 11 editorial opposing the troop "surge" comes a Jan. 12 article by Dave Eberhart noting that the "surge" will be "more of a 'trickle' because "[o]ne of the reinforcing combat brigades is not scheduled to deploy to the chaotic country until May of 2007."

Good news: the Spocko-Melanie Morgan controversy finally graces the website of WorldNetDaily. Bad news: it comes in the form of Morgan's WND column, in which she complains that "liberal censors" are trying to "silence" her and fails to mention either Spocko or the cease-and-desist letter sent by her employer, ABC, that resulted in Spocko's website getting shut down -- which sparked the current criticism of Morgan. She also claims that her critics are "misrepresenting my words" but offers no evidence to support her claim.

Morgan and her fellow radio hosts -- Lee Rodgers, Brian Sussman and Officer Vic -- are scheduled to address the controversy at noon Pacific time today on their San Francisco radio station, KSFO.

The Post could clearly state that all of its quotes were real, and all of the stories of skepticism are true, and they are. But news coverage can be completely true and still look slanted against politicians or policies a newspaper doesn't favor. Friday's Post looks tilted to create the most pessimistic appraisal of Bush's chances the newspaper could muster.

In a Jan. 11 NewsBusters post, Ken Shepherd went after ABC's Charlie Gibson for stating that "millions of Americans have reason tonight to plan on a pay raise" with a proposed increase in the minimum wage. "Only thing is, it's just not true," Shepherd wrote, directing readers to a Jan. 11 MRC Business & Media Institute article in which he explained:

Of course, Gibson’s premise assumed that there are “millions” earning minimum wage, that they earn the same pay for years despite gaining work experience, and that they are dependent on government to improve their lot in life. All of those notions are false.

According to 2005 data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were only 479,000 hourly workers “earning exactly $5.15, the prevailing Federal minimum wage,” while some 1.9 million take in “wages below the minimum.” Those earning less than the minimum for whatever reasons (legal or illegal) would not get a raise with a minimum wage boost.

But Shepherd ignores the people who are making between $5.15 and $7.25 -- all of whom would presumably see some sort of pay raise because of the minimum wage increase. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 5.6 million Americans earn between between the prevailing minimum wage (some states have higher minimum wage than the federal wage) and $7.25, and an additional 7.4 million Americans currently making more than $7.25 are likely to see a "spillover effect" of raised wages because of the higher minimum wage.

In a Jan. 10 NewsBusters post, Mark Finkelstein recounts "a conference call for bloggers conducted this afternoon by Snow and Brett McGurk [pictured here], the National Security Council's Director for Iraq -- adding, "I had the opportunity to participate on behalf on NewsBusters" -- during which Snow said, "Thank God for blogs." Finkelstein offers no further clarification, so we will be forced to assume a few things.

First, we assume that Snow is thanking God for conservative blogs; we don't think for a moment that a Republican press secretary is praising his Creator for the existence of, say, Daily Kos or Atrios. We can also probably assume, since Finkelstein doesn't make a point of saying how liberal bloggers participated, tjat only conservative bloggers were invited to participate in Snow's "conference call for bloggers." (And given the virtual silence in the conservative blogosphere regarding Spocko, it's safe to assume that his situation never came up in the conference call either, thus permitting an opportunity for Snow to thank God for him, too.) It's highly unlikely that Snow would acknowledge that any liberal blogger plays a role in, in Finkelstein's words, "cutting through the MSM clutter."

And what "MSM clutter" would that be, exactly? When the broadcast networks refused to air the Democratic response to President Bush's address last night? When ABC and NBC uncriticially reported Bush's latest Iraqi troop readiness goal? When a CNN correspondent declared, despite the evidence, that Bush is "very, very popular" in Montana?

Finkelstein has apparently forgotten that not all bloggers are conservative, and liberal bloggers have many of the same bias complaints about the MSM that conservatives do.

A Jan. 9 MRC CyberAlert item (and Jan. 8 NewsBusters post) by Brent Baker claimed that referring to President Bush's proposed increase of troops in Iraq as an "escalation" was "Democratic terminology," while calling it a "surge" was "more Bush-friendly." Baker doesn't explain why; but as Media Matters points out, the term "surge" implies a shorter-term increase than what has been reported as the expected tenure for the additional troops.

But not all conservatives are on board with that. From Tony Blankley's Jan. 10 Washington Times column:

The expected troop increase in Iraq is not a surge -- a surge being a transient, sudden rise. There is no plausible military theory which would rely on a brief increase in troop strength followed by the immediate withdrawal of such troops from Iraq.

The troops would surely be in theatre for an indefinite period. The words escalation, reinforcements or higher sustained troop levels would all be honest. The word "surge" is deceptive.

Baker also doesn't explain why "escalation" is "Democratic terminology" when it's arguably a more accurate term to describe Bush's plans than "surge."

One press report says that a rift has developed between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon allies, who want a military/American administration, much like MacArthur’s very successful occupation of Japan after World War II, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who reportedly wants more civil (read State Department) and international (read U.N.) involvement.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has openly stated that he wants the U.N. to administer a post-Saddam Iraq, and the courageous PM has gone on his own little jihad to see this happen.

What are Powell and Blair smoking?

[...]

Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the U.N. as being a viable international forum of diplomacy, and find ways to diminish, not increase, its role in world affairs.

One thing appears certain, however: A surge in troop levels is not the answer.

Instead, the United States should seek to create a multinational force or United Nations force that could replace American troops during a phased withdrawal, followed by the creation of a strong and secular military in Iraq, one with close ties to the United States and NATO.

NewsBusters' Mark Finkelstein is becoming quite the master at selectively editing the transcripts he posts to bolster his claims. He does so again in a Jan. 8 post depicting a debate between MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and "smart and plucky" author Bob Kohn (who repeated a false MRC claim about ex-New York Times editor Howell Raines in his WorldNetDaily-published Times-bashing book). From Finkelstein's item:

Kohn kicked off the exchange with Joe this way:

"I watched NBC Nightly News, and Brian Williams this evening had a story about Bush's proposal to increase troops in Iraq. He had three experts on the air discussing that proposal. Not one of those experts supported Bush's plan. They all were against it. So that's bias."

Scarborough's first ploy was to assert that in light of weak public support for the surge "it's kind of hard to get somebody that's going to go on as an expert that's going to support a troop surge."

Kohn laughed that lame line out of the water: "Oh, come on, Joe. Tell me that NBC News couldn't find one person in Washington, one expert, who could have supported the administration. Give me a break."

Defeated on that notion, Scarborough hit a new low with this outlandish assertion: "I guess the more important question is: should they? When you're talking about a surge where all five Joint chiefs are opposed to it, where 12% of Americans support it?"

Finkelstein abruptly ends his transcript there. But the exchange continued, and Scarborough hinted at why he took that position:

KOHN: Three of—no, that's not fair and balanced. You have three experts on. You can have one of them that supports it.

SCARBOROUGH: You know what? I will remember this, Bob, the next time we have a position where conservatives are on the side of 90 percent of the American population, and you complain because NBC News puts one liberal and one conservative on there.

Finkelstein apparently doesn't disagree with Scarborough's contention that conservatives regularly complain when a liberal is allowed to weigh in on a conservative issue that most of the country supports.

Finkelstein went on to assert that Scarborough engaged in "panel-packing ... with Kohn left to assert NBC's liberal bias alone," but he doesn't note how Scarborough ended the segment, laughing as he did so:

SCARBOROUGH: All right. We've got to go. Bob Kohn, I'm usually with you. You're usually on the side of the angels. Tonight, though, we knew that you were so powerful, we teamed up on you three to one, just to prove how liberal we really were. Well, I'm a conservative, right? So I think it's two conservatives, two liberals. But you did a great job. I appreciate you being here tonight. Sorry to team up on you.

Finally, in calling Scarborough "so sycophantish, even Keith Olbermann might have been embarassed by it" in defending his network against "charges of liberal bias" by Bill O'Reilly, Finkelstein ignored the claim by panelist Paul Waldman from Media Matters (full disclosure: my employer) that it had found "over 1,100 instances of conservative misinformation" on NBC and MSNBC.

The full clips and transcripts of shows like these are easily found online. Finkelstein should know better than to edit out stuff that conflicts with his argument.

It should be no surprise by now that WorldNetDaily will avoid telling all the facts about a story when those facts refect poorly on its political agenda. And so it is with a Jan. 9 article on a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report claiming that former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger "went to extraordinary lengths to compromise national security and that the Department of Justice could not assure the 9/11 commission it received requested documents."

A Jan. 10 Washington Post article includes important details that WND didn't:

The report was issued only by Republicans on the committee, not the entire committee.

WND quoted Republican Rep. Tom Davis as saying that "the Justice Department's assertion that Berger's statements are credible after being caught is 'misplaced,' " but the Post article states: "The Justice Department said yesterday that it had no evidence Berger's actions had deprived the commission of any documents."

Davis is the only person quoted in the WND article and sought no response from Berger or anyone else named in the report. The Post article, in addition to getting a response from the Justice Department, got responses from Berger's attorney and the National Archives.

So Much for Not Taking a Position on Global WarmingTopic: Media Research Center

A Jan. 4 Media Research Center press release quotes Brent Bozell: "As anyone who has read our reports knows, the MRC has not taken a position on global warming." We're not sure what "reports" Bozell is referring to, but when the vast majority of MRC's global warming-related content that we've seen is devoted to attacking the idea, it's hard to claim with a straight face that it has "not taken a position."

Take, for example, a Jan. 9 NewsBusters post by Rich Noyes -- no mere blogging schmo, he's the MRC's research director. According to Noyes, the NBC Nightly News, after reporting that the unusually mild winter in some parts of the country on El Nino, "flip-flopped" after "a handful of lilberal complainers" proceded to "whine" and spew "mean-spirited idiocy," "repudiated" the original report. Global warming supporters "whine" and are "mean-spirited"? Nope, no "taking a position" there.

Further, Nightly News host Brian Williams hardly "repudiated" the original report. As the transcript Noyes supplied demonstrates, an updated report served up what Williams called "the rest of the story" (we thought the MRC believed in telling all relevant sides of a story). The report went on to note that "[m]any experts say" global warming "plays a part," adding: "So the unusual warmth in the Northeast could partly be the result of global warming. Indeed, even the heavy snow in the Rockies this year might be partly caused by global warming."

As the italicized phrases show, the report couched the global warming link in large doses of speculation -- hardly the "repudiation" Noyes claims it is; Noyes, meanwhile, offers no evidence that global warming is not involved.

So a top MRC official belittles global warming supporters and attacks a TV network for merely acknowledging the possibility that global warming exists -- and somehow that is not having "taken a position on global warming."